Too quickly over, but an altogether engaging version of a classic bit of common literary currency.
An arch 19th-century version of the fable, sans explicit moral, is paired to illustrations of silhouette figures flexed in lively ways by barred “Scanimation”-type screens.
Viewers can opt to take an active or a (semi-) passive role. With the Read-to-Me option, a plummy-voiced narrator reads aloud as the pages and the superimposed screen advance automatically. Children reading the text silently can manually swipe to the next page and drag the screen over the black silhouettes at any chosen rate to control the speed with which the contenders nod, gesticulate and dash along. Park’s formal but not stuffy language echoes that of the poet’s contemporary Edward Lear and matches like qualities in the art nicely. “So at last this slow walker came up with the hare, / And there fast asleep did he spy her. / And he cunningly crept with such caution and care, / That she woke not, although he pass’d by her.” Just for fun and a bit of added animation, the text appears on sign boards that swing down from the top and can be cut loose to fall and shatter violently into individual words. The free version of the app is subsidized by ads that run across the top of each frame; readers who prefer a commercial-free experience can upgrade within the app for a fee.
Too quickly over, but an altogether engaging version of a classic bit of common literary currency. (iPad storybook app. 5-8)Pub Date: April 9, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Auryn
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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